I will try to analyze individually some politicians (either spanish or not) and their relation with the new media and more specif Twitter, a social network chosen by many politicians for its versatility, its necesity of sending clear and direct messages and its great options of interacting with citizens (or these with them, as we will see).

In this post I have decided to analyze the spanish Prime Minister twitter account (@marianorajoy).

While we know he doesnt control this account by himself, we also know that he doesn’t write his speeches (and this is is extensible for most of the high hierarchical politicians), he doesnt declare anything without being supervised by his advisors, etc. It is even recognized by him in his biography on the social network, where we can read “Welcome to my Twitter, where my team is with me”. It can be perfectly said backward, its him who is, luckily, with his team.

Leaving aside this brief introduction, lets go with the analysis. The Twitter account @Marianorajoy has published 6310 tweets so far (against the 7000 written by Cayo Lara, or the more than 10000 by Rubalcaba). They are mostly institutional messages, propaganda messages, and they are not looking for the citizen’s opinion. They dont ask questions to the followers or try to get their interaction. On the contrary, the messages that the Government want to be sent, are sent. Of course, the fact that they dont look for the interaction with other users (and potential voters) doesnt mean this messages to not cause any questions or reactions, but its not usual that this questions are answered. So here we find the first mistake using Twitter because its a perfect network for the interaction with other users and to hold a horizontal communication between them, but Mariano Rajoy’s team still uses the traditional media model of communicating, a vertical model where the message is sent without waiting or looking for any response, a model that is not valid for the new media but, however, most politicians arent willing to let it go.

Moreover, his account nowadays has more than 400.000 followers (Rubalcaba 190.000, Cayo Lara 105.000). From the account @marianorajoy 9.6 tweets are written everyday which means 200 each month. His (or their) favourite moment of the day to writte tweets is since midday but most of them are written between 4 and 8 in the afternoon, as it is shown in this picture:

Most of the messages are written from the website twitter.com , but some of them have been written using Ipad. In the other hand, Friday is the day when they write the most during the week and, obviously, there is less activity during Saturday and Sunday.

Mentions and RT’s from @marianorajoy

If most of the tweets that appear on his profile are institutional or RT’s of other people or institutions related with the Government, some other users are often mentioned too. The most mentioned are:

Source: tweetstats

As I said before, most of the RT’s made on the Prime Minister Twitter account are to messages sent by other members of the government or institutions of it. These are the users who receive most of the RT’s:

Source: tweetstats

So, Does Rajoy team understand what is expected about the 2.0 model of communication? With these results, we could say no. He (or they) answers some users, but these answers dont try to start a conversation with the citizen, just answer an specific, question which would be very enriching for the citizens and the system.

The answers are so formal that keep the user away because sometimes it seems to be a machine answering, instead of a group of people.

Twitter is not a press room where a notice is watched by the journalists on a TV screen and questions are not allowed. The only barrier for Twitter are its 140 letters and that can be uncomfortable for many. Having an account on a social network doesnt mean to be a 2.0 politician.